Schopenhauer on the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Abstract

‘The Principle of Sufficient Reason in all its forms is the sole principle and the sole support of all necessity. For necessity has no other true and distinct meaning than that of the infallibility of the consequence when the reason is posited. Accordingly every necessity is conditioned; absolute, i.e. unconditioned, necessity therefore is a contradicto in adjecto. For to be necessary can never mean anything but to result from a given reason.’ These words are taken from the beginning of section 49 of Schopenhauer’s The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. They express sentiments with which I am to some extent in agreement, and it therefore seemed to me worth while to explore in some kind of detail Schopenhauer’s treatment of the issues. It might, however, be asked why the view expressed by Schopenhauer should be of philosophical interest, what, if anything, turns on the rejection of the notion of absolute necessity. To this I can reply by saying only that apart from the intrinsic interest of the notion of necessity itself, an issue on which a philosopher ought to make himself clear, Schopenhauer himself points to some of the consequences of his doctrine — the impossiblity, for example, of an absolutely necessary being, and the similar impossibility of ontological or cosmological arguments.